Long wait is over for Chillicothe youths eager to try skate park

Andrew Williamson steered his two-wheeled scooter down one ramp, up another and then executed a little spin off the quarter-pipe catching something on the low side of big air.

"This place is awesome," Williamson said Monday. "I've been dying for this to open for like six, seven years."

So, how old are you?

"Eleven," he said.

"He's in hog heaven," said Andrew's mother, Jill Williamson.

Scott Hilyard

Andrew Williamson steered his two-wheeled scooter down one ramp, up another and then executed a little spin off the quarter-pipe catching something on the low side of big air.

"This place is awesome," Williamson said Monday. "I've been dying for this to open for like six, seven years."

So, how old are you?

"Eleven," he said.

"He's in hog heaven," said Andrew's mother, Jill Williamson.

The skater, biker and scooter kids of Chillicothe were rewarded with their years of patience during the weekend with the "soft opening" of the park district's new and long-awaited skate park. The park, on the back side of the Chillicothe Bible Church that has leased its property to the city's parks and recreation department for 20 years for $20, was open for business last Friday morning. A steady stream of customers - upward of 30 to 40 at any given time - packed the park all weekend. There were more than 20 kids at the park riding and lounging beneath a blazing summer sun early afternoon Monday.

The only complaint so far from neighbors was that the kids weren't strictly obeying the park's "dusk" closing time.

"They're kids. They don't know what dusk is," said Harry Burdick, who lives across the street from the new park. Burdick helped circulate a petition that raised concerns about the park in March. "I was out at (9:50 p.m. on Sunday night), and they were still out there. That was my only complaint. Everything else has been fine. The noise part is nothing like we'd thought it would be."

Parks director Kevin Yates acknowledged the only complaint he'd received was of users at the park beyond its closing time.

"That's something the board will be evaluating and might consider a closing hour instead of the less precise use of the word 'dusk,'" Yates said. "But we're pretty happy with it. There has been a lot of positive feedback, and the kids have been very respectful. When they were asked to leave, they left."

On Monday, the flow of the wheeled traffic on the park's ramps, rails and pipes made it seem as if the equipment had been in place for years; kids seemed to intuitively know what to do. No one crashed. No one fell hard. No one wore even the most rudimentary scrap of protective gear. Parent spottings were rare. There were some reports of some minor bullying and the occasional swear word and holler rose above the general murmur of voices and the scrape of wheels on metal and concrete. But the park was quieter than the frequent trains that rolled through the back end of the neighborhood a couple of blocks away.

"It's just a fun place to hang out and scoot," said Jeff Davis, 16, a scooter rider.

Austin Golay, 10, said the new park is a lot better than the one he has visited in Quincy, where his grandfather lives.

"That park had a lot of highness (high ramps), people were scared of it," he said. "This place is more under control. It's way better than Quincy."

At 22, Steven Enfield might have been the oldest person at the park on wheels. A Chillicothe native, Enfield said he'd skated every conceivable patch of decent concrete in the city and also had been chased away by the city's police from most of those. Although he said he has turned his life around, he also admitted to more serious transgressions of the law than trespassing on a skateboard.

"This park is a place where kids can come and stay out of trouble," Enfield said. "If I would have had something like this, I might have stayed away from doing bad things and not ended up where I ended up."

Where was that?

"Prison," he said.

Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or at shilyard@pjstar.com.

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